Thursday, October 27, 2016

Marcuse on Language's use as a Authoritarian Organizer

"On the other side of the fence, ordinary language still is haunted by the big words of higher culture: by the dignity of the individual and the inalienable rights and the philosophy of democracy, etc. However, the defense laboratories and the executive offices, the time keepers and managers, the efficiency experts and the political beauty parlors (which provide the leaders with the appropriate make up) speak a different language, and for the time being they seem to have the last word. And from these centers of organization and manipulation, the word is transmitted and incorporated into the common universe of discourse and behavior. The words thus transmitted is the word which orders and organizes, which induces people to do and to buy and to accept what is offered, to identify themselves with the function they perform in established society, to release all frustration in the (equally organized and controlled) realm of leisure and relaxation. As a consequence, whole dimensions of communication atrophy, or they are ritualized."

Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Beacon Press), pp. 67-68.

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